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SPSP2018

People are living longer than ever. For many countries, average life expectancy is predicted to soon exceed 80 years. As a longevity expert put it, “We should be planning for more life.” And of course, this includes maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

“Okay, so that’s our world,” said Alice Eagly, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) 2018 Annual Convention Legacy honoree, as she explained the broad differences in the division of labor across men and women that persist to this day. Eagly is perhaps best known for her work on how gender stereotypes emerge from the social roles men and women adopt. As Eagly explained, we learn about men and women from how labor is divided.

Holding a sign she couldn’t read, Megan Phelps-Roper stood at her first picket line at age 5, and for the next twenty years joined her Westboro Baptist Church family in spreading hate against groups from Catholics to Muslims to LGBT people. To most people, what Phelps-Roper did sounds biased, and it can be tempting to think of her as a irredeemable.

Atlanta, GA - New research shows when it comes to successfully engaging and including minorities in the workforce and schools, organizations need to focus on inclusion. Several social psychology researchers will share details of their results at the SPSP Annual Convention on March 2nd.

“Institutions tend to overemphasize numerical diversity to the exclusion of inclusion” says Erika Hall (Emory University), one of the presenters and co-chair of the symposium.

In 1931, James Truslow Adams defined the American dream as the idea that “each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” At present, however, social mobility is remarkably stagnant, with one’s circumstances of birth having a large effect on later social class. Despite this fact, many people overestimate social mobility.

The sexual double standard (SDS) is a belief that access to sexuality varies by gender. According to SDS, women are expected to be passive “gatekeepers” of sexual activity; men the “initiators.” Women are socially punished for having sex; men are rewarded. In a set of two experiments, Dr. Yuliana Zaikman examined how these gendered stereotypes might influence the way people think about sexual consent.

The 2016 US presidential election brought polarized reactions, both joy and despair, to the forefront. During “Emotions & Politics: The Inextricable Link,” Allison Troy of Franklin and Marshall College and Brett Ford of the University of Toronto discussed people’s predictions about, and reactions to, the strong emotions that resulted from the election of Donald Trump.